<p>What school to go to is like buying a car. Most people need a car to commute and run errands. They really wouldn’t have any appreciation or need a super performance car (Porsche, Ferrari…). Even if you give those super high performance car to them, they would still drive it like a Honda and wonder why all they hype. For those select few who would like to throw their hat in for a chance to drive one of those dream cars, due to limited availability, sellers of those cars would like to make sure buyers of those cars would know how to drive it and appreciate what it could do.</p>
<p>“, some of it is cultural and some economic. They feel they need a really good reason to go farther than they can travel easily on their own. In many cases they want to live in a city, and don’t feel any attraction for rural or suburban schools. (Lots don’t even apply to Princeton.)”</p>
<p>Perhaps I’m misreading your posts, JHS, but I’m not sure why you give a pass to kids who want to live in a certain environment (city) and therefore bypass rural or suburban schools – but my young Michigan friend who doesn’t want the environment that he’s grown up in doesn’t get a pass for wanting to bypass Ann Arbor.</p>
<p>Plainsman, I loved your post. I also like the OP’s sense that not everyone has to have a reach-- kids will bloom where they are planted, and sometimes that’s community college. But Plainsman reminds me that motivation develops in different ways, and that ‘stats’ are not very meaningful over the course of a long life. And I think for many people, that means a reach is as important as a safety-- because at this age you’re growing so fast it’s not a good idea to pigeonhole yourself according to who you seem to be in the fall of your senior year.</p>
<p>Thanks MomofSongBird – that makes sense!</p>
<p>I don’t think every kid needs to apply to a reach but no kid should apply to only reaches. </p>
<p>Some kids don’t want the highly competitive enviornment, others thrive in the kind of enviornment. DS wasn’t that challenged in HS although he was in the IB program and took the most difficult classes they offered. He graduated in the very top of his class and ended up going to a reach. His first week there he called home to tell us that everyone there was smarter than him. It was an eye opening experience and it was good for him. He was motivated to work harder than he’d ever had to work before and ended up graduating with honors. </p>
<p>DD applied to the same school (I think only because her brother went there) but thankfully was wait-listed. Although she too was in the IB program in HS and did very well, she would not have done well in a highly competitve college environment. She is attending a not very selective match school, is active in many activities, very social and doing well academically. Both have been very happy with their choices. </p>
<p>If a reach school is a good fit, apply. If not, why bother?</p>
<p>Sometimes students from our area, at least the public school students, end up choosing their “safety” even if they are admitted to one or more “reachier” schools. The roster of schools turned down by students at Schreyer or Pitt honors can be quite impressive. These are not necessarily unsophisticated students who do not want to venture far from home. </p>
<p>Decisions can be for financial reasons (not only to save money for grad school, but to be able to afford unpaid internships or summer programs), but also for other reasons. Perhaps a student would prefer a schedule of small and challenging honors courses instead of large intro courses, or may be attracted to counseling opportunities available to honors students - especially if they aspire to win a prestigious fellowship following graduation. </p>
<p>Some students will find that they will have many more opportunities to participate in undergrad research with top mentors at the state school, beginning as a freshman or sophomore, whereas at some of the reach schools they will face stiff competition from graduate students and peers to find these opportunities. And, as they work in undergrad research and mingle with grad students from all over the world, they will not be any more limited to students from their specific geographical area than those who chose to attend a reach.</p>
<p>Honors housing among others who share their values (where they may meet students from all over) is also attractive to many, and some of these state schools are home to specific academic programs that can hold their own against any school in the country. And then there are some that do crave the social atmosphere to be found at a big sports school such as Penn State, and those who are simply impressed by how much students at these schools seem to actually like their school.</p>
<p>My son is so stressed out over the application process that he has decided to apply ed to cornell. His stats fit the school and he loved the campus. My concern is that the financial aid package will be insufficient and he will take on too much debt. I have my fingers crossed that all will work out ok. I am frazzled by the whole process.</p>
<p>Plainsman said: “There is a presumption some have that higher stats automatically means higher performance, or that if your kid is in the bottom 25% of standardized test scores he/she will struggle against the “geniuses.” This is so much crap. I say go for it.”</p>
<p>True . . . except when it’s not.</p>
<p>What I mean is that I think it’s valid for a kid whether they are better served by being amnong the “stars” ata school, being right inthe middel fo the mix, or being in ther lower end and lifted up by others.</p>
<p>Plainsman is right that the metric for that calcualtion should NOT be simply GPAs and standardized test scores. But it’s also hard to get data to support other measures that one can use. So - for the most of us - those test scores and GPAs are the bets one can do to figure out if one is among the geniuses or not.</p>
<p>Example: a friend’s kid wanted to be among the stars at college, so she deliberately picked a college in which her stats placed her in the top end. She reasoned that the opprtunities at the school - internships, research grants, faculty attention - woudl flow more readily to her than if she were in the middle 50%. For her it worked.</p>
<p>Kei</p>
<p>Here’s why I worry about the overemphasis on the “reach” thing. The ACT scores are in. My D is thrilled because got her score up a bit to a 30, making her solidly in the running for all the schools she likes. Meanwhile, the forum is jammed with kids who are despondent and think they suck because they “only” got a 33 or a 34. </p>
<p>We can’t all be in the top 1/2 of 1% of the country, and our kids too often get the message that they have to be superstars. The vast majority of college bound kids, and their parents, are just like me and my family: “normal” smart. </p>
<p>It just kills me that kids think they are losers because they got 33s on their ACTs.</p>
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<p>Yes, some students do lose sight of what a good score, or a solid score is because they read CC. Others do know that they have a very good score and they are really feeling the need to announce their scores on a message board and/or they would like to brag. So they don’t look as though they are really bragging, they list their score (some even add onto their true score from what I have read) and then they tag on something to indicate that their score is so awful and how their hopes and dreams are now dashed. I would not take all of these comments to heart.</p>
<p>^I totally agree. Disappointment with a 33 on the ACT – or thinking one has to take the SAT over and over and over again to bring a, say, 2320 up to a 2400 – ridiculous. And unhealthy, imo.</p>
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<p>I agree that anyone who can score 33 is very smart and is doing very well, but getting rid of the Reach, Match, etc terminology won’t cause the competition for the very high-end schools to go away. And getting rid of it won’t increase the chances smart kids with “only” a 33 for getting into their dream school that has a single-digit acceptance rate. For that they’ll still often need a 34 or 35 to be competitive and a 36 to really stand out. Even then their chances aren’t that good. </p>
<p>So go ahead and abolish the Reach term if you like, but you are still going to have a bunch of long faces on April 1st from kids who were denied at their dream school.</p>
<p>D. has not considered any of it at all. She had the list in priority order. When she did not get to her #1, she said, “Oh well” and happily went to #2. If #2 was out, she would have gone to her #3. No emotions, no drain of energy on something that is out of your control. And it has worked perfectly too, as she is very successful college senior applying to Med. Schools with the same attitude.</p>